Exit

October 24, 2007

There’s a rule that covers slightly off-the-wall videogames. For every Rez, there’s a Fantavision. Accompanying each Phoenix Wright, a Cooking Mama comes into being. Put simply, for every fresh idea so brilliant you can’t believe nobody came up with it before, there are two concepts giving 110 per cent, yet somehow coming up short.

Such is the case with Exit, an initially tidy-looking little puzzler spoilt by the very nature of what it actually depicts: the perilous dangers involved in escaping fire. Oh, the irony! For those who aren’t aware, Exit challenges gamers, via the ever-so-stylish and anonymous persona of Mr Esc, to guide stricken and pathetic members of the public out of collapsing yet strangely set-squared buildings. This is done by operating a series of switches and levers, either directly or via right-analogue AI character-movement commands.

Naturally enough, the structures you’ll be trapped within are full of perilous pitfalls, all of which need to be avoided like the plague in a specific order for everyone to get out with their lives still intact. Trouble is, getting any element of the sequence wrong will lead to at best five minutes (at worst 15) retracing your steps, as there’s simply no safeguard in place to correct easily made mistakes more swiftly.

And thus, an interesting concept is made more frustrating than a 0-0 draw away at Accrington Stanley. For Manchester United. When they’re down to ten men. Nobody wants to pay seven quid to put themselves through that, man.